Hear that? That's the sweet sound of silence from this week's column; bar the odd break from its annual week long holiday.

Despite my somewhat patchy presence last week, a whole wealth of stories from the U.K. and Europe hit the wires. In this Monday morning wrap up, we'll take a look at some of the more important stories from this side of the pond.

Facebook amends privacy policy ahead of IPO

The world's most popular social network was forced to adjust its privacy policy, spurred on by a helpful, forceful nudge by the Irish data protection agency.

With no more than a few days before the company starts trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, the site clarified its ‘data use policy', as it is now known, to explain how it uses your data to make Facebook tick over. It also explained how and when it uses cookies, along with other privacy-related morsels.

Facebook also hinted at off-site advertisement, according to sister site CNET,which would balance out the ad-free smartphone applications.

4 million TalkTalk broadband customers to decide on porn filter

The company had initially asked only new customers whether they wanted to block access to such sites, but will throw open the doors to its connected masses.

In a clever move, it preempts a formal decision by the U.K. government to force ISPs into enacting opt-out blocks on adult orientated sites, including graphic content and gambling and so forth.

It also puts pressure on other ISPs to ask their customers the same question in what could be the beginning of a major crackdown on children supposedly accessing online pornography.

Westminster has been on a "family friendly" campaign for the past year in efforts to secure the British Web from illegal file-sharers and adult content, in what can only be described as if it were Helen Lovejoy's "Won't somebody please think of the children?" shrieks.

As ZDNet's Violet Blue explains, the move will likely reach a legislative level this year after the government's opposition backed the plans, but is an "overkill move" when "most providers offer a range of filters and tools that can be set up by customers to block pornography" anyway.

The European Parliament is set to vote on the agreement in June, but has faced heavy fire from most sides. ACTA's first rapporteur --- or person in charge of overseeing and investigating the treaty --- resigned in protest over the bill, claiming the Parliament was being "undermined".

Europe's digital chief Neelie Kroes said that ACTA was dead in the water and it would likely not be ratified, meaning the treaty will not come into force in any European member state.

Courts in U.K., Netherlands continue Pirate Bay block

It's not just the British who are feeling the cold breath of the judiciary breathing down their necks. Only a couple of weeks after five major U.K. broadband providers were forced by the High Court in London to block access to The Pirate Bay, five Dutch ISPs were given a similar court order to restrict its customers from accessing the site.

While the British ISPs must prevent access to Magnet-link site, often used by file-sharers to illegally download copyrighted material, its customers are still legally allowed to circumvent the block. It may be good news for U.K. customers, but the same can't be said for their Dutch counterparts.

EU Parliament forces mobile roaming price plunge

Good news if you travel across Europe, as the European Parliament has voted in favour of cutting the cost of mobile roaming costs over the next two years. Data-hungry travellers will soon see price caps imposed on mobile networks, meaning smaller ‘virtual' operators will benefit when they piggyback on their parent's network.

It follows a ZDNet UK investigation which exposed the massive 80,000 percent mark-up on the actual cost of data roaming, thought to be at least twice the mark-up on cocaine.

Data roaming costs will be capped at €0.90 per megabyte from July, and will gradually fall to €0.50 in July 2014. While the Parliament can only do so much about the state of its member states, it also pushed through anti-‘bill-shock' measures on European mobile networks at €50 to prevent mobile users from returning home to an extortionate and unreasonable data bill.